Everything in Texas is big; therefore, most things about the Lone
Star State are big as well. So it is with Rick Koster's well-researched,
entertaining and thoughtful historical account of Texas music.
From Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, George Jones, Roky Erickson and
Kinky Friedman to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Junior Brown, Robert Earl
Keen and the Butthole Surfers, music has long been one of Texas'
greatest exports. It sure as hell ain't the skiers.

Koster has met the daunting task of compiling huge amounts of
information taken from interviews and pure research and casting
it with some form of chronology and meaning with formidable skill.
The result is a hefty book broken into eight chapters, one for
each genre and like subsets.

Texas Music is a triumph in many regards, but the best,
most readable element is not in the words themselves but in the
spirit with which they were written: Koster obviously loves Texas
music as much as any of the artists he's included. Regarding the
state as perhaps the most culturally diverse and colorful breeding
grounds in the country, Koster has set about to do justice to
perhaps the only thing from Texas that doesn't annoy residents
of other states. And he succeeds masterfully--y'all. (MH)

Tongue First fits snugly into the post-feminist, rude-girl
genre of academic cultural analysis. What makes it a far better
read than the usual thesis-in-disguise is that Jenkins (a) writes
good American prose and (b) has no particular ax to grind. She
just writes, with refreshing intelligence and humor, about what
interests her: the body, how we define it and it us. Her pursuit
of the body's assorted pleasures, wholesome and dubious, brings
her to a sensory deprivation tank, a subterranean New Age spa,
a Chippendales strip show, a piercing and tattoo parlor, and--to
me, even more exotic--a department store cosmetics counter. And
to bed. Jenkins is at her best when she writes about how changes
of costume or physical context can transform identity--even a
change of shoes. Afterall, she asserts, a man donning a pinstripe
suit for the office is as much "in drag" as RuPaul.
While both smart and unpretentious about such generalities, Jenkins
mainly limits her observations to the specific--her own body and
its "adventures"--and this approach gives her incidental
theorizing an honest, down-to-earth feel. Best of all, her unapologetic
comments about good sex and pleasurable drug use are among the
sanest I have read. And her author photo, in which she wears a
tattoo and a towel, is certainly fetching. (JL)

Why Can't I Get What I Want?
by Charles H. Elliott and Maureen Kirby Lassen
(Davies-Black Publishing, cloth, $22.95)

It's difficult to respect the self-help genre. Every Ph.D., social
worker, mystic healer and Tom, Dick and Harry is cashing in on
the mindless "getting in-touch-with" fluff. That's why
Why Can't I Get What I Want? is a welcome relief, although
that's hidden behind a clever title that even Oprah could endorse
for cheesy book of the month. But that's where the intellectual
forfeit so often required with self-help stops. Psychologists
Charles H. Elliott (of Albuquerque) and Maureen Kirby Lassen guide
readers to understand behavioral patterns with the latest in psychological
research involving "schemas,"mental filtersthrough which each person interprets situations, relationships
and themselves. Refreshingly, Why Can't I forgoes all the
sugary cooing of many other self-help rags; the language is straightforward,
and the concepts are upheld by elementary physics. As you read
through the book, you're given the opportunity to do exercises
that help you understand your dominant "schemas," along
with an analysis of how each affects your thinking patterns. Like
any other complicated machine, when you've gotta tighten a few
bolts in your brain, you better consult the official owner's manual;
Why Can't I is it. (JE)

Globalization and its Discontents
by Saskia Sassen (The New Press, cloth, $25)

Academics have a way of making their topics sound important by
making them very boring. I've tried to isolate how exactly that
is done in this book, and the answer seems to be a whole lot of
unnecessary words. The density of the prose is unfortunate, because
the ideas in Globalization are as interesting as the book
itself isn't. Sassen does a good job of demonstrating that the
primary actors of international relations are no longer nation-states.
Individual cities are now the nodes of international commerce:
centers of finance, industry and technology that are essential
for a global economy. Transnational corporations require new legal
codes and regulation by international agencies. And immigrants
have become integral parts of the global work force. State sovereignty,
in other words, becomes decreasingly important, at the same time
that the importance of traditionally ignored players rises. Not
surprisingly, Sassen devotes a fair amount of space to the impact
of the Internet. She also makes a good case for the growing viability
of feminism, as the "unbundling" of state sovereignty
opens the way for female and minority participation. This book--rather,
the thesis of this book--will fascinate many students of
the global economy, and although it isn't something that the average
reader will find of pressing excitement, its ideas are strong
enough to demand attention. Hopefully, the writers who translate
academic verbosity into popular essays will give this book a good
read. (AE)